By any other name: Why the ‘travel ban’ really is a Muslim ban

July 3, 2018

5 Min Read

People protest during a rally about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold President Trump's ban on travel from several mostly Muslim countries on June 26, 2018, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

(RNS) — Before the Supreme Court ruled last week that President Trump’s executive order banning travel to the U.S. by citizens from majority-Muslim nations was not discriminatorily aimed at Muslims, the argument had already been won in an unlikely place: the mainstream media.

Since becoming president, Trump has gone out of his way to fulfill a central campaign promise: to bar Muslim immigrants and refugees from entering the country. To improve the chances of this policy passing legal muster, the Trump administration has insisted on framing the executive order as a “travel ban” rather than a “Muslim ban.”

Trump and his supporters have had plenty of help in this endeavor from journalists who continue to describe Trump’s policy of barring various Muslim populations from the U.S. as a “travel ban.” A common assumption at work is that this language is an impartial way to describe Trump’s immigration policy on select Muslim-majority countries.

But let’s be clear: The phrase “travel ban” is neither neutral nor objective. It’s a euphemism, meant to distract the nation from the underlying anti-Muslim bigotry driving the ban. When journalists repeat this language, they become potentially complicit in amplifying Trump’s propaganda and in inscribing anti-Muslim prejudice into federal immigration policy. Neither of these tasks is befitting of the journalistic profession.

It doesn’t help that the Supreme Court, in upholding the ban, has now effectively encouraged both the White House and the media to double down on this language. In what will go down as one of the most troubling decisions in the modern history of the Supreme Court, a majority of justices determined in Trump v. Hawaii that the ban reflects a neutral policy.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts argued that Trump’s campaign call for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the country,” along with Trump’s many anti-Muslim statements and tweets, were of no consequence in determining whether the ban itself violates the principles of religious liberty enshrined in the First Amendment.

As long as the president says he is acting out of national security concerns and doesn’t explicitly call out Muslims in his executive order, he gets a pass on accusations that he is violating the Constitution, not to mention prejudicial statements he’s made in the past. Intent doesn’t matter.

It was left to Justice Sonia Sotomayor to call out Roberts and her other colleagues on the hypocrisy in justifying this policy as neutral or as a mere travel ban. She noted how these same justices had no qualms about focusing on intent in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In that case, the court ruled in favor of a Christian owner of a bakery who refused to serve a same-sex couple.

The court’s majority insisted that the civil rights commission that handled the couple’s complaint had demonstrated bias toward the religious beliefs of the owner. But when it came to a case involving Muslims, the question of bias seemingly became irrelevant.

Sotomayor gave a thorough account of the many anti-Muslim statements that Trump made during his campaign, in addition to his promise for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” She pointed to his insistence that “Islam hates us” and that “(w)e’re having problems with Muslims coming into the country.”

She noted that Trump asked one of his advisers, Rudy Giuliani, to find a legal way to enact the ban on Muslims. And when Trump was given opportunities as president to disavow these past statements, Sotomayor pointed out that Trump refused.

Sotomayor’s observations about Trump’s intent arose from the administration’s efforts to adjust the ban each time the federal courts raised roadblocks. To take one example, neither North Korea nor Venezuela was listed in the first two executive orders. The administration added them to the last iteration only to circumvent the legal obstacles presented by the courts, particularly in regards to First Amendment concerns. The addition of two non-Muslim-majority countries to the third ban was arguably window dressing.

“Taking all the relevant evidence together,” wrote Sotomayor, “a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was driven primarily by anti-Muslim animus, rather than the Government’s asserted national-security justifications.” In other words, by ignoring the obvious intent behind the ban, the court abandoned both reason and the Constitution in order to put the stamp of neutrality onto a bigoted policy.

Intent matters, as do the words journalists use to describe policies emanating from the White House. When journalists repeat the language of “travel ban” without raising critical questions about where this language comes from and how it sanitizes a policy with clear origins in bigotry, they risk serving as a mouthpiece for White House propaganda and repeating the mistakes made by the Supreme Court majority in Trump v. Hawaii.

The time has come to raise the bar for how the ban is discussed and debated. Measured by intent, this is a Muslim ban. If some journalists decide to push back and scrutinize this designation, I think that’s fair. They will find many of us are willing and ready to have this debate.

But journalists must be equally willing to interrogate their own preferences for the “travel ban” designation and to consider the possibility that this language — far from being neutral — can all too easily come across as buttressing the administration’s policies.

(Todd Green is associate professor of religion at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and a former adviser on Islamophobia at the State Department in Washington, D.C. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)

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The “Muslim travel ban” was written for President Obama by his DHS. Trump merely implemented it. And if this is a Muslim travel ban, why are the countries with the highest Muslim populations not on the list? These are countries that swear to harm America. Race and religion don’t really matter. Which is true for any other crime, or threat thereof.

The PERMANENT travel ban was all Trump’s doing. Initially drafted without any consultation with White House Counsel to ensure it capable of sane implementation and met lawful parameters. Relying on neo-nazi Steve Bannon to come up with provisions which included 1) attacking the rights of visa holders and legal permanent residents and 2) an outright Muslim ban.

2 revisions later, after removing the most objectionable portions, and adding Venezuela and North Korea, there was enough plausible deniability to cover up the entirely bigoted and malicious nature of the action.

“why are the countries with the highest Muslim populations not on the list?”

Because Trump is a bully and spineless, who went for easy targets.

Countries we did not have diplomatic ties to. Ones where we were likely to have refugees coming from and largely due to US military efforts abroad. A economic, military and diplomatic crapstorm would have followed if we did it to legitimate sponsors of terrorism such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

” Race and religion don’t really matter. Which is true for any other crime, or threat thereof.”

Except to a Trump supporter. To them there are no refugees, only terrorists. There are no asylum seekers, only drug mules and gang members. Race and religion being the distinguishing factors employed. As in the first draft of the travel ban.

BTW nearly two years into the travel ban and there is still nothing to support why it was done, outside of appealing to malicious bigots who support Trump.

“Recycling centuries-old ignorance and bigotries pits Americans against one another. When such falsehoods are amplified by political
officials or through policies, they erode the ideals and institutions inherent in the American identity. They also endanger lives by stoking
fear, bigotry and violence against Muslims.

An engaged, active pluralism is the best defense against extremism and abuse of power. Attacks on the crucial center space are likely to
continue for some time. But holding the center open is essential to the survival of the ideal and practice of American pluralism. And that is
best served by building mutual trust and overcoming mutual suspicion. These kinds of efforts don’t generally attract much media attention, but
in the long term they best serve our society as a whole.”

“But holding the center open is essential to the survival of the ideal and practice of American pluralism.”

I’ve long agreed with that statement, but in today’s debased climate those words seem almost quaint. I fear that we’ve passed the point of no return where the center holds, though I’d love to be proven wrong come November and beyond.

9) The execution of an eloping couple in Afghanistan on 04/15/2009 by the Taliban.

10) – Afghanistan: US troops  killed in action,  killed in non-combat situations as of 09/15/2011. Over 40,000 Afghan civilians killed due to the dark-age, koranic-driven Taliban acts of horror

11) The killing of 13 citizen soldiers at Ft. Hood by a follower of the koran.

13) The May 28, 2010 attack on a Islamic religious minority in Pakistan, which have left 98 dead,

14) Lockerbie is known internationally as the site where, on 21 December 1988, the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 crashed as a result of a terrorist bomb. In the United Kingdom the event is referred to as the Lockerbie disaster, the Lockerbie bombing, or simply Lockerbie. Eleven townspeople were killed in Sherwood Crescent, where the plane’s wings and fuel tanks plummeted in a fiery explosion, destroying several houses and leaving a huge crater, with debris causing damage to a number of buildings nearby. The 270 fatalities (259 on the plane, 11 in Lockerbie) were citizens of 21 nations.

15 The daily suicide and/or roadside and/or mosque bombings in the terror world of Islam.

16) Bombs sent from Yemen by followers of the koran which fortunately were discovered before the bombs were detonated.

17) The killing of 58 Christians in a Catholic church in one of the latest acts of horror and terror in Iraq.

19) A Pakistani minister, who had said he was getting death threats because of his stance against the country’s controversial blasphemy law, was shot and killed Wednesday, 3/2/2011

20) two American troops killed in Germany by a recently radicalized Muslim, 3/3/2011

21) the kidnapping and apparent killing of a follower of Zoraster in the dark world of Islamic Pakistan.

22) Shariatpur, Bangladesh (CNN 3/30/2011) — Hena Akhter’s last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl. Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh’s Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public. Hena dropped after 70 and died a week later.

23) “October 4, 2011, 100 die as a truck loaded with drums of fuel exploded Tuesday at the gate of compound housing several government ministries on a busy Mogadishu street. It was the deadliest single bombing carried out by the al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group in Somalia since their insurgency began. ”

o 24) Mon Jun 4, 2012 10:18am EDT
o
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A suicide bomber detonated an explosive-packed car outside a Shi’ite Muslim office in central Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 190 in an attack bearing the hallmarks of Iraq’s al Qaeda affiliate.
The bombing on a Shi’ite religious office comes at a sensitive time, with the country’s fractious Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs locked in a crisis that threatens to unravel their power-sharing deal and spill into sectarian tensions.”

25) BURGAS, Bulgaria | Thu Jul 19, 2012 11:27am EDT

(Reuters) – A suicide bomber carried out an attack that killed seven people in a bus transporting Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, the interior minister said on Thursday, and Israel said Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants were to blame.

On the other hand stopping travel from countries that are sources of terrorism until some sort of proper vetting system is in place would appear to fulfill the President’s duties as Chief Executive Officer.

It’s rather like why having borders and enforcing them enhances security.

Relax, your friendly Supreme Court is going to issue rulings like this for the rest of your lives. No sense getting all worked up over details. Seriously, most people in the USA have no business worrying that not enough Muslims can get in our country from all the possible places they might come from. OF COURSE it’s intended to limit some of them—–and—–leftie Christians have far bigger things to worry about with Trumpism.

Evangelicals have never cared about human rights of anyone except their fellow Evangelicals. They don’t see Muslims as human beings, but as garbage, and they don’t care what happens to them.It’s not just Muslims though. If a person isn’t white, middle class to wealthy, and Evangelical, they don’t give a damn what happens to them. See all the immigrants at the Mexican border. Evangelicals won’t even help get the children food, water and medical care.

If you had bothered to look at the Security Experts’ brief as I suggested, you’d have noted that they provided urls to among others the State Department with security cautions on these very countries.

And your two citations do not have “(t)he State Department and DHS … calling Trump a liar”.

They describe an early draft report that was leaked that did not include final assessments from the agencies involved.

The old saying is “Better safe than sorry”, as well demonstrated by the previous Administration’s total neglect to multiple warnings of Russian intrusions into American voting systems and social media in the run-up to the 2016 elections.

Devout evangelical Christians Catherine and William Booth sought to bring salvation to the poor, destitute, and hungry by meeting both their “physical and spiritual needs” and founded the Salvation Army.

Absent are similar organizations founded by the LBGTQ, atheist, and secularist communities.

The problem with this argument, put forth and sustained all these months by folks that hate Trump/Christian conservatives/Americans fearful of terrorism, is that it does not square with one terrifically uncomfortable fact> if it were a true Muslim ban, it would exclude folks from Indonesia and other predominantly Muslim nations. It singled out several nations (previously singled out by the All Exalted Grand Poobah Obama) as net exporters of terrorists. Let’s face it, doctrinaire liberals (whether allegedly Christian or not) give not a whit about Islamicism but prefer the tolerant-sounding reassurance that “Islam is a religion of peace.”

well gees! todd green you, could of at least fact checked the constitutions immigration laws first. to know that immigration bans, are not according to race, creed, or color unless they are hostile to the united states. and that all immigration bans, are the result of hostility of nations, areas, religions, or ideologies.

even during wwi abd wwii, the usa band immigration from hostile countries and areas. even the internment camps of wwii were not by race.
It is estimated that 17,477 persons of Japanese ancestry, 11,507 of German ancestry, 2,730 of Italian ancestry, and 185 others were interned by the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the war. but not all japanese, germans, italians, romanians, etc. were interned. and some, were actually cleared of loyalty suspicions.

immigration laws, are quite clear on assimilation. and about 99% of muslims, do not assimilate but remain cloistered hostile to host countries. and prejudice, can be either a useful tool or a destructive tool. muslims, do not even worship the same g-ds. or they would not be murdering each other and everyone else. murder, robbery, theft, kidnapping, rape, and all hostilities are the results of worshiping false, cults, occults, pagan, g-ds/idols.

Joke of a group? Wow, you are really delusional. That joke of a group was responsible for the riot in Portland this past week; not to mention the riots after the 2016 election. Kinda like saying ISIS is the jv team.
I love how you socialists discount mob rule and violence when it supports your causes.
As Eblabulus would say, you have no credibility so we are done here.

Making crap up again Jimmie. Muslim immigrant communities in America are some of the oldest we have. We have the largest convert community in the world. Evidently integrating into society has not been a problem here.

Europeans don’t know how to do immigration. They don’t do citizenship by birth or really do religious freedom. So bullcrap from their neo nazi parties on the subject can be ignored at will.

You know just the other day my neighbors were demanding the liquor store and bars in the community closed, the supermarket stop selling pork, muzzein calls through building PA systems and beheadings every Thursday. Oh wait, I am just kidding.

Frankly I could not give a crap what one worships. As long as they play well with others, that is their right. A right our nation was founded on. Something you despise.

please specify the community, and the year established for verification. will you, please supply some verifiable facts here?

cause even i know, the muslim community here in denver is not that less than three decades old. and no they, do not assimilate. and they, are about as hospitable as the immigrant osama ben layden was.

come on here how many islamic, terrorist attacks have we had here? with muslims being less than 2% of the population, committing between 85 to 95% of the terrorism here in america in the last two decades. so what kind of a isolated bubble, are you living in?

and your “We have” tends to indicate you are muslim. which tends to add suspicion, to your possible creed. and the koran does say, it is ok to lie to deceive muslims you don’t like and all other non-muslims. and do not try to give me illusions, that muslims are a peace loving creed. because muslims in the middle east and all other muslim countries disproves that.

I will tell you this, the NYC Metro area and North Jersey have one of the largest, oldest and most diverse “Muslim communities” on the East Coast. I put it in quotes because it is really a multitude of different ones (Turkish, Bosnian, Arab, South Asian, Moro…). For p

The Muslim community in Denver are largely refugees from a variety of countries and South Asian tech workers. Calling them a single community is also incorrect, but useful for bigots to consolidate the groups they attack.

“and your “We have” tends to indicate you are muslim.”

What I believe is generally well known to people who pay attention and do not rely on easy bigoted stereotypes. What I am is someone who understands and appreciates American values such as freedom of religion.

Anyone who has an argument “___ religion is evil” is generally full of crap unless the blank area is “Any”.

“As long as the president says he is acting out of national security concerns and doesn’t explicitly call out Muslims in his executive order, he gets a pass on accusations that he is violating the Constitution, not to mention prejudicial statements he’s made in the past. Intent doesn’t matter.”

This is an intentionally misleading and inaccurate take on the Court’s opinion.

The travel ban is terrible policy, probably ineffective, and almost certainly was inspired by Trump’s ill-conceived view of the world. However, the reality that the Court recognized is twofold. First, the order does not, on its face or in its effect, discriminate on the basis of religion. The ban affects less than 10% of the world’s Muslims and affects other religious groups from those countries equally, and is drawn from lists compiled by prior administrations that did not express any animus towards Muslims. Those countries also have a way to be removed from the list (which some countries successfully did).

Second, the Court is ill-equipped to determine whether or not foreign policy decisions are effective. Other policies in other situations face strict-scrutiny, meaning that the policy/law/etc. will only be upheld if the Court determines that the policy-making body would have enacted the policy even absent discriminatory motives. The Court recognized that in cases of national security, the Court can’t complete this step, and so would apply only rational basis review.

Essentially, Trump called for a clearly unconstitutional policy. Faced with legal realities, Trump was forced to instead enact a policy that aimed to address the same concerns the discriminatory policy would have attempted to address but without the unconstitutional discrimination. In other words, the system worked to block an unconstitutional policy and force a constitutional one on the president. A bad policy? Yeah, probably, but again, as Roberts pointed out, that question goes beyond the Court’s powers and duties.

“The court’s majority insisted that the civil rights commission that handled the couple’s complaint had demonstrated bias toward the religious beliefs of the owner. But when it came to a case involving Muslims, the question of bias seemingly became irrelevant.”

Doesn’t this work in both directions? Isn’t Sotomayor demonstrating hypocrisy by refusing to account for bias in Masterpiece Cakeshop? It seems to me that the only Justices in a position to throw out accusations of hypocrisy are Breyer and Kagan.

I would love nothing more than to flood the streets of Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Austin, Charlotte, Oakland, with thousands of cops and federal agents. The unfortunate thing is that the American citizens that live in the inner cities of these prestigious cities

Um, Trump and conservative Christians have earned hostility towards them. They support using government to wage malicious attacks on others. As for terrorism, its telling that Trump flat out lied about the measure being based on prior incidents.

“if it were a true Muslim ban, it would exclude folks from Indonesia and other predominantly Muslim nations”

Way to weaselword and make terrible excuses. Trump went after countries which lacked diplomatic ties to the US and were sources of refugees coming to this country.

“previously singled out by the All Exalted Grand Poobah Obama) ”

That is a well worn lie. Obama’s travel ban was temporary and based on momentary exigencies. Trump sought a permanent one based on appealing to panicky bigots. As he had bragged about in the campaign and after the fustercluck of the first travel ban.

Facts have never had anything to do with the Trump Administration nor Conservative Christians who support him so uncritically.

“give not a whit about Islamicism but prefer the tolerant-sounding reassurance that “Islam is a religion of peace.”

Why does the first amendment trouble you so much? There is no section of it penciled in which says, “except Muslims”. Good to know that you supported the measure out of sectarian hostility and not security concerns.

A. Christians use gov to attack others? What in the world are you talking about? Obama did it and it was okay because it was temporary but Trump doing it temporarily is wrong…sounds like garden variety lib hypocrisy. Conservatives are generally more attuned to facts than libs who prefer invective, name calling and sloganeering. Your last paragraph lacks clarity so no response necessary except to say it is liberals who prefer suppression of free speech to open discussion.

LOL! Conservative Christians stump for a legal privilege to discriminate under the guise of “religious freedom” and support attacks on civil liberties of various groups under color of law. The Christian Right got its start as the remnants of segregationists. Seeking legalized bigotry is in the DNA of the movement.

” Obama did it and it was okay because it was temporary but Trump doing it temporarily is wrong”

Obama didn’t do what Trump did. That has always been a flat out lie repeated ad nauseum. The first Trump travel ban fustercluck is living proof of that. It attacked legal residents, visa holders, caused chaos at airports, and was drafted primarily by neo-nazi Steve Bannon Obama did a temporary ban of certain countries based on conditions at the time. He relied on the State Department and White House Counsel for implementation and then lifted it when the situation changed. Trump is doing something to appease a bigoted base and no other concerns. He planned it to be permanent.

Conservatives are more likely to be ignorant of basic facts or just plain lie to support their views. Its why they throw their weight behind counterfactual nonsense like attacking references to global warming (to appease pollution producers), creationism in public schools, trickle down economics, the list goes on.

By all means take offense to my colorful language and descriptions. It still doesn’t change how repugnant, malicious and plainly boneheaded the policies you support are.

Your view is that religious freedom must bow to political and social norms. All must conform. That is contrary to First Amendment and reeks of dictatorships and authoritarian thinking, which is the default position when liberals are pressed. Sorry you understand so little about conservative Christians. Have a joyous 4th.

Isn’t it interesting how ardent the right-wing Christian defenders of religious liberty are to defend the religious liberty of a group being targeted because of its religious beliefs?

Well, when they’re not. When they’re not only totally disinterested, but are the ones who are actually doing the targeting of the religious minority.

It’s almost as if they have neverreally believed in that religious freedom slogan they bandy about as a weapon to attack their “enemies” — any more than they ever believed in “morality” and “family values” as they pulled the lever for a twice-married philanderer who boasts publicly of grabbing women’s genitals.

And then they expect people to take them and their claims about “God” and the “good news” of the Christian gospel seriously….

For [Rev. Robert] Jeffress, it’s all one big package deal. Outlawing abortion is trumpeted as the Big Prize, but he’s tickled pink about the anti-gay, anti-union, and anti-Muslim stuff too. He’d refer to the anti-gay stuff as “religious liberty” — a necessary rebranding now that Trump-o-mania has made “family values” and “sanctity of marriage” rhetoric untenable — but it’s hard to take talk of religious liberty seriously from someone who is at that very moment giddily celebrating the upholding of a Muslim ban. Jeffress is for “religious liberty” the same way the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were — religious liberty for me, but not for thee.

9) The execution of an eloping couple in Afghanistan on 04/15/2009 by the Taliban.

10) – Afghanistan: US troops  killed in action,  killed in non-combat situations as of 09/15/2011. Over 40,000 Afghan civilians killed due to the dark-age, koranic-driven Taliban acts of horror

11) The killing of 13 citizen soldiers at Ft. Hood by a follower of the koran.

13) The May 28, 2010 attack on a Islamic religious minority in Pakistan, which have left 98 dead,

14) Lockerbie is known internationally as the site where, on 21 December 1988, the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 crashed as a result of a terrorist bomb. In the United Kingdom the event is referred to as the Lockerbie disaster, the Lockerbie bombing, or simply Lockerbie. Eleven townspeople were killed in Sherwood Crescent, where the plane’s wings and fuel tanks plummeted in a fiery explosion, destroying several houses and leaving a huge crater, with debris causing damage to a number of buildings nearby. The 270 fatalities (259 on the plane, 11 in Lockerbie) were citizens of 21 nations.

15 The daily suicide and/or roadside and/or mosque bombings in the terror world of Islam.

19) A Pakistani minister, who had said he was getting death threats because of his stance against the country’s controversial blasphemy law, was shot and killed Wednesday, 3/2/2011

20) two American troops killed in Germany by a recently radicalized Muslim, 3/3/2011

21) the kidnapping and apparent killing of a follower of Zoraster in the dark world of Islamic Pakistan.

22) Shariatpur, Bangladesh (CNN 3/30/2011) — Hena Akhter’s last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl. Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh’s Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public. Hena dropped after 70 and died a week later.

23) “October 4, 2011, 100 die as a truck loaded with drums of fuel exploded Tuesday at the gate of compound housing several government ministries on a busy Mogadishu street. It was the deadliest single bombing carried out by the al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group in Somalia since their insurgency began. ”

o 24) Mon Jun 4, 2012 10:18am EDT
o
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A suicide bomber detonated an explosive-packed car outside a Shi’ite Muslim office in central Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 190 in an attack bearing the hallmarks of Iraq’s al Qaeda affiliate.
The bombing on a Shi’ite religious office comes at a sensitive time, with the country’s fractious Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs locked in a crisis that threatens to unravel their power-sharing deal and spill into sectarian tensions.”

25) BURGAS, Bulgaria | Thu Jul 19, 2012 11:27am EDT

(Reuters) – A suicide bomber carried out an attack that killed seven people in a bus transporting Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, the interior minister said on Thursday, and Israel said Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants were to blame.

Muslims are not a religious minority in the nations where Islam is the dominant religion.

Nor does the travel ban target a group because of its religious beliefs.

The election was about selecting a competent chief executive and Commander-In-Chief, not about electing a Preacher-In-Chief.

It is unlikely in the extreme that had the other candidate won the can with North Korea would not have been kicked down the road another four to eight years for just one example.

The lesson is not that folks were ardent for “a twice-married philanderer who boasts publicly of grabbing women’s genitals” but that if the other side ever wants to win it needs to not nominate a plastic-wrapped personally nasty marketing MBA-generated wind-up candidate who can’t mix in with “deplorables” who knee-capped her primary opponent with dirty tricks and needs to actually appeal to Americans and not just left-wing nutjobs, college professors in sociology departments, the folks in the Castro District of San Francisco, and a phalanx of people on the dole.

Your language is not surprising, given your views. However, aside from special pleading to bolster your hero, BHO, what is notable is the absence of specifics in assertion that Christians tried to attack civil liberties of others. Aside from expressing their views on issues and practices, what have Christians done to merit your hatred?

Tone trolling and strawman arguments appear all you have here. Oh well. You feel the need to attack others but question why people respond in an unfriendly manner. How droll.

Nobody gives a crap about BHO except Trumpies. They are so deranged that we had a black man in the WH they would kill themselves out of spite if Obama had an anti suicide program.

They use him for garbage whataboutism arguments where they acknowledge acceptance of corrupt, dishonest and malicious policies of Trump to pretend opponents are hypocrites. It’s rather funny. Goes to show how immoral conservative Christians can be.

“what is notable is the absence of specifics in assertion that Christians tried to attack civil liberties of others”

Confirmation trolling as well. Don’t worry. Stick around here long enough you will get specifics from me and others. I just don’t play denial games with the delusional or snowflakes.

You are making a phony statement because you don’t really want to address what I am saying. Oh well. I guess you didn’t want an honest discussion anyway. Fair enough. You didn’t want to be taken seriously after all.

Let me put it to your this way, the first amendment doesn’t give one a right to attack others in the name of your faith. It also is not a privilege to hijack government for your sectarian interests. Not does it apply solely to Christians. Take it as you will.

Since you are unwilling or unable to offer specifics as to how Christians are interfering with people exercising their civil rights ( your original core accusation), we cannot proceed. Too bad; I thought you might be the rare lib who can do more than throw tired insults. Bona fortuna.

It’s not a question of tone. I just choose not to spend too much time exchanging insults. Substance is better. And ultimately, the best to aim for is to shave off some of the more outrageous notions that show up on social media.

well it is, becoming pretty obvious you are already painted. as you still fail to post, the year of establishment. twenty, thirty, or forty years old, does not contribute much to largest, oldest, or most diverse. that is no different than someone claiming to be the oldest and biggest brother.

and as for white supremacist, they have been around since before the founding of this country. even jews, have been here since before the founding of the usa.

and your reading comprehension skills are selective. when i indicate the last two decades, and you stretch it to include others less relevant today. and is obvious that you have not read the immigration laws in the constitution as you choose to spew instead.

and yes there was a time stalin, and the san bernadino muslim who never did any of those things also.

and i do not know, where you get the idea i like christians. that can be just as wicked and evil horrific as any pagan, muslim, buddhist, hindu, occultist, or jew when they become powerful. i believe my, dislike of corrupt religions from pagan to jew is pretty much even for all.

where everyone, who helped to destroy the world religiously the last two hereafter times are all doing this again. because you all do not believe, you are all here in THEIR Story of The Physical Creation again. THE G-D is not a liberal, why in the hell would THEY give you a different physical story to screw up in? when you, can’t even get this one right here in IT.